Page 113 of The Storm of the Empire

I took her hands. "What else is there? This has been getting worse since I took off the pendant, and maybe that’s why my gut told me to not take it off before. I knew I couldn’t handle it.”

Her face fell. “Do you regret it?”

I looked right into her eyes, cupping her face. “Not for a single minute. Not even if this drags me into madness.”

“I can’t lose you. I just found you.” She put her hands over mine, fighting tears.

“We’ll find a way to prolong it. I promise.”

We didn’t get any more time to process it because Jaxus, Nyx, and Kiera burst back in the room. They made us go over the whole thing again in more detail with both of them asking questions.

“Can we just stop trying to make it something else?” I demanded after an hour. “We know what it is. I know it’s why I didn’t want the pendant to come off, why I was so reluctant. It was my own foresight warning me about myself.”

Kiera gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Goddess,” Nyx muttered.

“That’s heavy.” Jaxus paced the room. “Can we put it back on?”

“And make Hazel crazy like Nyx was after losing Kol? Never. I’d rather suffer madness myself than subject her to it.” I hugged Hazel tighter to me.

“Hey!” Nyx snapped.

“He’s not wrong,” Kiera said, clearly done with his shit.

“There has got to be a way to train it,” Jaxus said, exhaling a heavy breath. “Every other type of magic can be trained, why not foresight?”

“There’s no way of knowing how, though,” Kiera replied.

“Why not? Surely someone with the power tried. Why would there not be a record of that somewhere?” Jaxus argued.

“Because fae with the power strong enough to cause the madness never lasted long enough to be trained,” Kiera murmured. “And no one alive has even seen a fae with it. How would we even know where to begin?”

“We’ve got to come up with a way. If we can heal Nyx, we can help Luka, too,” Jaxus said like he could force his way to a fix. “We can do something similar. Work with mind healers, use Gran while she’s here. We won’t give up.”

“No, we won’t, Luka,” Kiera said, joining her mate. “He’s right; we figured things out for Nyx. I will start researching right away.”

I nodded, but something told me it was futile, and I believed it.

Why wouldn’t I believe it? My gut was always right, and now I knew why.

I pushed it all out of my mind while Hazel was distracted. I couldn’t let her know I was okay with my fate. I had to learn to insulate my thoughts to spare her from this. I’d fight as long as possible for her, but I wouldn’t ruin her happiness with the weight of the inevitable future.

THIRTY-SEVEN

HAZEL

“He’s getting worse.”

“Still?” Kiera and Jaxus said at the same time.

“Yes, especially if we’re apart.”

Kiera looked up from the book she was reading. “Apart how?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Like, distance or mentally—what kind of apart do you mean?”

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